


kiss the ring

by strangehunger



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: (but poorly done), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical terrible Harrow, Cohort AU, Definitely the “Enemies” part of Enemies to Lovers, Does distance make the heart grow fonder?, F/F, Pre-Slash, Vows of Fealty, angstish, kind of, no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24077656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangehunger/pseuds/strangehunger
Summary: Gideon had thought of her reunion with Harrow before. More in those first years, when the euphoria at getting out had been overcome with the agonizing fear that Harrow might yank her by the chain and drag her back into this pit. After the first few years, she only thought about it when a portion of each of her spoils were tithed back to the Ninth. Her spoils had been puny at first, a real kick in the nuts for her inflated self esteem, but over the years it had grown and grown, easily rivaling that of any of the greater houses. Each tithe brought her closer to the freedom she had blackmailed from Harrow years before.In the grand theater of her mind, this had gone down differently. For starters, she had been laying on a pile of shining gold with no less than three hot women, like, feeding her grapes or something, her tenure with the cohort raising her out of Harrow’s clawed grip per their contract.Ten years.She really thought she was going to make it.___________________________________Seven years after bargaining Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus for her freedom to join the Cohort, Gideon Nav receives a summons back to Drearburh.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 18
Kudos: 216





	kiss the ring

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! It's been a little while! 
> 
> Like many others in the fandom and in the Locked Tomb Server, I have gotten the Cohort AU fever. Symptoms include: thirsting over a Gideon with scars and a uniform and making questionable fic decisions. 
> 
> The idea for this fic is something along the lines of, what if Harrow had released Gideon to join the cohort -- and then got the summons from the emperor, years later, and dragged Gideon back? I wanted to explore that and see how it would change their dynamic, and how it would change the interaction between Gideon and other characters later in the story. I also wanted to write a Gideon that is a little bit more worldly and savvy, who understands more of the task set in front of her as cavalier. I wanted to see how it would change with the characters being a bit older. I won't write the whole thing, but I will be rewriting a series of random one shots rewriting scenes from the book that I find interesting. 
> 
> This one starts immediately after Gideon’s return to Drearburh, after being dragged back from the frontlines.
> 
> Everything takes places about seven years after the book time in the book, with the caveat that the Emperor’s summons was also delayed. Gideon and Harrow are about twenty four and twenty five ish. I've taken a few other liberties with the book, namely the deal Harrow makes Gideon. Also with space travel. 
> 
> Thank you to the many people in the server who tried to help me make sense of ranks! I'm sure I've failed you with my vagueness, but I appreciate it. Thank you to Cheyanne for beta-ing. Any mistakes are her fault. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Castle Drearburh was just as dreary as Gideon remembered it. Dusty, too; the first thing she did upon taking a step in those hallowed halls was sneeze as loudly as possible. The sound of it ricocheted through the near-empty cathedral, bouncing off of bone-strewn pillars and crumbling arches. As if in response, there came a small fall of dust from overhead, greenish with the bioluminescent coating that kept Drearburh lit up like a funhouse. If she could have toppled the Ninth with a sneeze, Gideon would have done so ages ago. 

A lifetime ago, she might have been held down and lashed for her insolence. Remembering all the times that she had been dragged kicking and screaming into the transept, she forced herself to sneeze once more, with feeling. 

She expected the rattle of skeletons, their heads nearly snapping off of their brittle necks as they whipped around to stare at her with far more dexterity than the decrepit nuns dotted between them. She expected the frantic clack of bone rosaries fumbled between papery hands and the quiet susurrus of prayers wheezed out between hacking coughs. She expected all the familiar sounds of her miserable childhood, each one seemingly amplified in the dark cavern of Castle Drearburh. She didn’t expect the _quiet._

 _Apparently_ whatever Harrow had up her moth-bitten sleeve was important enough to drag Gideon’s ass halfway across the galaxy and back into the hole in the ground that was Drearburh, but not enough to get asses in seats. Maybe the nuns had all croaked. Maybe the skeletons had leeks to harvest. Maybe it was all bullshit after all. 

It was hard to slouch in a Cohort uniform, but Gideon slouched. She slouched her way through the nave of the dark cathedral, aiming for insouciant and accomplishing sloppy. It was even more difficult to do with one hand on her sword, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. She hadn’t seen a living soul since passing through the towering, pale doors of Drearburh, but that didn’t phase her. There wasn’t exactly a booming economy of living souls on the Ninth, and most of them were a great deal nastier than the dead. 

Like the one standing ahead of her, dark head bowed over a scrap of paper. 

Gideon had thought of this moment. More in those first years, when the euphoria at getting out had been overcome with the agonizing fear that Harrow might yank her by the chain and drag her back into this pit. After the first few years, she only thought about it when a portion of each of her spoils were tithed back to the Ninth. In all the swollen ranks of the cohort, she alone wore the black crest of the Ninth House, a spot of darkness lost amongst a cacophony of amaranthine purple and shining Gold, the deep blue of unlet blood, and sturdy, resilient brown. Her spoils had been puny at first, a real kick in the nuts for her inflated self esteem, but over the years it had grown and grown, easily rivaling that of any of the greater houses. Each tithe brought her closer to the freedom she had blackmailed from Harrow years before. 

In the grand theater of her mind, this had gone down differently. She had been laying on a pile of shining gold with no less than three hot women, like, feeding her grapes or something, for starters, her tenure within the cohort raising her out of Harrow’s clawed grip per their contract. 

Ten years. 

She really thought she was going to make it. 

In all the scenarios that she had ran through, Gideon had said something much cooler than, “You look like shit.” 

Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus lifted her gaze from the letter slowly, dark eyes registering Gideon as if she had just noticed her arrival. _Bullshit._ As if this entire sepulchre wasn’t coated in the bones of the Ninth, feeding every step, every reverberation back to their mistress. 

If life were anything like the tawdry comics passed amongst the lower ranks, Gideon would have returned home a hero, a prodigal daughter welcomed open armed (and open legged) by an heir grown more beautiful in the years since their last meeting, and then two would have ravished one another over the altar. This would have of course required Harrow to sprout both tits and a heart, and Gideon didn’t know which was more unlikely. The thought made her want to swallow her own sword; a blade down the esophagus seemed a kindness in comparison.

The years that had passed — seven empirical years, three months, and sixteen fucking days, to be precise — had not endowed Harrow with indescribable beauty and poise, not even the hollow refinement once posessed by her dearly departed, despicable mother. Even if it had, there wasn’t much to see beyond the thick paint she wore, her sharp face carved by black and white lines into the grotesque mask of death she had worn every day of her horrid little life. She stood no taller than she had the day Gideon left, though perhaps a bit thinner. Wan. Worn.

Good. A rage that Gideon hadn’t known in years boiled in her blood. Let her waste away, let her crumble to the dirt with the rest of her forsaken house. _Just don’t take me with._

It didn’t matter that Gideon was taller— with Harrow standing on the raised dais of the Ninth pulpit, she seemed to tower over Gideon. Only a few steps separated them. Gideon was fast and Harrow was necromantically feeble. If she acted quickly, she could race up those steps and knock Harrow on her rude little ass. 

She would be impaled by a column of bone before Harrow could hit the ground. Worth it. 

“Griddle,” said Harrow at length. No rank, neither the one she had purchased for Gideon years ago or the one that Gideon had earned herself. Not even Nav. _Griddle._ The years had distorted the memory of Harrow’s voice, warping it into something distant and hazy. The real thing was no more pleasant, yet the sound of it carrying that hated moniker still startled Gideon. “I see the Cohort hasn’t done much to temper that insufferable mouth of yours. Do you use the same filthy tongue with your superior officers?” 

“Only the hot ones.”

Harrow’s mouth flattened into a hard line. She stared at Gideon for a moment, presumably counting to ten in her mind like the anger management coach she so desperately needed might have taught her. “Really, Griddle, had I known you would tarnish the name of the Ninth House with your profanity, I might have had it cut out—”

“Cut the bullshit, Harrow,” said Gideon, who had endured enough of these lectures to know it was going nowhere that she liked. “What are you up to? Why did you drag me back to this shithole?”

Beneath the paint, Harrow’s nostrils flared. She ran her fingers over the piece of paper in her hands — and up close Gideon could see that it was _paper,_ actual, bona-fide paper, rather than scraps of flimsy that were trafficked even between the higher levels of the Cohort. That, more than anything, had Gideon convinced that she should take off through the doors and scramble back to the Cohort envoy that had dropped her here, if it was still there. 

It _had_ to still be there… 

“Am I, as heir to the House of the Ninth, not entitled to call for the return of my vassal? My only sacrifice to the Emperor Undying’s legions?”

Gideon scoffed. “What do you know about sacrifice?”

Gideon regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. She wondered if Harrow pictured the same thing she did. Three pairs of feet, swaying in the air. Pelleamena’s gown nearly long enough to kiss the stone floor. Harrow’s own fingers, tiny around a thick cord of rope. 

Harrowhark lifted the paper in her hand, and read aloud. 

_“Salutations to the House of the Ninth, and blessings upon its tombs, its peaceful dead, and its manifold mysteries…”_

Everything that came out of her mouth after that was bullshit. A summons from the Emperor! The Lord Undying! Huzzah! And not a single one of it to do with Gideon. 

A spark flickered in her chest, one that she thought had been smothered during the descent into the inimical atmosphere of the Ninth House. Harrowhark and Ortus, two of the most insufferable people Gideon had met in her life (and after seven years in the Cohort, her “asshole” quota was quite high), were being packed off to the glorified tomb of the First to, what? Spend summer camp killing themselves with a group of equally intolerable heirs and their bodyguards? Sure, if Harrow survived she might spend eternity hanging over the Cohort, but the chance that she also might be rightfully killed was worth it — especially with _Ortus_ as her cavalier. The man went into the throws of melodrama over a papercut. 

_“...There is no dutiful gift so perfect, nor so lovely in his eyes.”_

And with that, Harrow fell quiet. 

Gideon could have cried. Gideon could have dropped to the ground and kissed it. Not _this_ ground, of course, but maybe one with fewer dead people. Like her barracks, which she would hopefully be seeing soon, because apparently Harrow had…

“You dragged me halfway across the galaxy to… brag?” 

Harrow scoffed. She folded the letter back in on itself, contorting it back into a series of crisp lines. _Paper._ It was probably one of the most valuable things on the Ninth right now. The Emperor wasn’t fucking around. 

“Oh, Griddle,” said Harrow in a voice that made Gideon’s skin crawl. Well, made Gideon’s skin crawl more than usual, a shiver of premonition running the length of her spine. “Simple-minded as always.

Nausea pooled in the pit of Gideon’s stomach, a sick, twisting feeling of unease. She remembered her descent into Drearburh, the many ancient penitents and lay people that had crept out of her way after she debarked the shuttle. Not a single new face, though many were either missing or grown more gnarled with age. Aiglamene was already gone to dust. Crux, unfortunately, had yet to follow. And Ortus...

“Nonagesimus,” said Gideon, the taste of the name viscous and vile in her mouth,“Where is Ortus?”

Gideon wasn’t stupid. She had seen plenty of necromancers and their cavaliers, both in combat and in ceremony. Whether they mooned over one another like teenagers or fought tooth and nail, they were always wrapped up in each other, systems of binary stars. Sirens went off in Gideon’s head. 

“By now? In your shuttle, I’m assuming.”

And here Gideon thought she could outrun it. Outrun Harrowhark and all of her ghosts, outrun the miserable emptiness of Drearburh and all of its trappings. She took a step back, then another, then turned and ran back down the length of the nave. And Gideon never ran. 

Stupid. She couldn’t even outrun Harrow and her skeletons. Not halfway, and bone erupted from the ground; thick, swollen columns of it, shooting toward the vaulted ceiling like the bars of a prison cell. She swerved to the side, and more sprouted in her way. 

“Oh, Griddle,” said Harrow from somewhere behind Gideon. Her voice carried, seeming to press in on Gideon. “Stop being so dramatic.”

No way out. The only way she could go was further in. 

So she did. Gideon spun back, advancing on Harrow. Her sword was in her hands before she knew it. The only possession she had left Drearburh with, seven years ago. The only ghost she carried with her. 

Even with a sword arcing toward her, Harrowhark looked bored. She offhandedly flicked a knuckle, bulbous and bleached, and it swelled into a shield of bone. The impact of the zweihander against preternaturally strong bone sent a shock through Gideon’s arm. Pain rather than will lowered her sword.

The shield cracked, then shattered. Harrow looked at the raining shards in annoyance. She used one willowy wrist to dab at a temple, wiping at a thin sheet of sweat and blood as if she had worked up a sweat through, like, aerobics. Gideon hated Harrow more than she had ever hated her in her whole entire life. 

“Oh, please,” said Harrow. “What did you expect? I would take _Ortus_?” 

“Uh, yeah, that’s his _job,_ ” shot Gideon back. _Hers_ was with the Cohort, fighting for the expansion of the empire. Winning glory on the battlefield. Shooting the shit with her comrades in the barracks. 

“The only battle wound Ortus is willing to sustain is a papercut,” said Harrow. For a fraction of a second, Gideon almost felt pity for her. If _she_ had had to spend the last seven years listening to Ortus draft the _Nigenad_ , maybe she would be desperate to get him off the planet too. “He is an embarrassment to the Ninth House.” Her gaze flicked over Gideon, surveying the crimson livery in disdain. Gideon doubted Harrow had ever seen so much color in her life. She had to get out of here _now,_ or she would end up in the synthetic black robes of a cultist by the time the floodlights shuttered out for the night. “Not that you’re much better.” 

“ _You’re_ an embarrassment to the Ninth House,” bit Gideon back, very maturely. “ _The Ninth House_ is an embarrassment to the Ninth House.” 

Harrow didn’t deny it. She took a step down from the dais, and Gideon took an instinctive step back. A strange brightness came over Harrow’s dark eyes, as if lit from within with sudden fervor. “Not anymore. I am going to become a _Lyctor,_ Nav,” said Harrow, possibly the worst string of words that could _ever_ come from Harrow’s mouth. “I can raise this House to its former glory,” she continued, as if the Ninth had _ever_ had former glory, “We will be written in history among the Imperial saints.”

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, a _lyctor._ A Hand of the Emperor, a holy saint of death, endowed with abilities that produced both revulsion and awe. Though those remaining of them cavorted with the upper echelons of the Cohort and frequented their strategy rooms, Gideon had yet to see one. One of her superior officers had once been stationed on the same outpost as Cytherea the First, and that was the closest Gideon had ever anticipated being linked to one. Helping _Harrow_ ascent to sainthood? Gideon feared for every living thing in the universe. 

“ _We_ aren’t doing shit _,_ ” said Gideon. “You want me to be, what, your _cavalier_?” She almost laughed on the last word. Gideon wasn’t a cavalier — she was a soldier. She had seen the cavaliers of other houses, prancing about with rapier in hand. She had seen what they could do. She had seen what could be done to them. “I have no reason to trust you. I have no reason to help you. You have nothing to give me.”

“Your freedom —”

“I _had_ my freedom, you heinous bitch,” said Gideon. “I would rather backflip off of the top tier of Drearburh then help you. I would rather drown myself in the depths of the River then help you. I would rather impale myself on my own sword than help you.”

“Again, with the melodrama—”

She raised the sword again. Harrow tensed, anticipating it be leveled once more at her head — and then her dark eyes went wide in the closest Gideon had ever seen her come to having an actual emotion — when Gideon, with a flick of her wrist, turned the sword on herself. 

She held the sword straight, the tip of it biting into her abdomen, and let it rest there. Harrow’s wide eyes were all she needed to see. This Harrow was different from the Harrow she had left behind seven years ago. That one would have raised all of the skeletons of Drearburh and thrown a party if Gideon had died. She would have had Gideon’s skeleton tap dancing within the meat of her dead body like some kind of marionette, celebrating the eve of her own death. 

This Harrow, though. This Harrow _needed_ her. 

Harrow took another step down. Gideon didn’t flinch back this time. Harrow took another step, and then another. By the time her feet rested on the same ivory tile as Gideon’s, it was evident that she hadn’t grown a single inch since Gideon had left. 

“It was never yours,” said Harrow, voice quiet. One bony hand came to rest on the hilt of the sword. She pressed, ever so lightly. “Your freedom. Your life. Your death. They belong to the Locked Tomb, and at the end of the night, the Locked Tomb is _me._ Whether you die _here—_ ” her eyes flicked around the cathedral, the vaulted hall of Drearburh, the bone-strewn eaves so a part of Harrowhark they might as well have stood in her own ribcage “— or elsewhere, it doesn’t matter. You will have died in service to the Ninth. But I will give you a choice. Lower your sword, Nav, or you will never leave the Ninth House again.”

Reluctantly, Gideon’s arm lowered, and the sword with it. “Yeah, you have to actually let someone _choose_ if you’re going to call it a choice. This is literal blackmail.”

“After the First House, I will free you. Not after ten years—.”

“— seven of which I’ve already _done—”_

 _“—_ but unconditionally. I swear it.”

“Your swear isn’t worth stone cold dick.”

“Go with me to the First,” said Harrow, “give me this one thing, and I will give you your life back.”

Gideon stared down at Harrow, still so small despite the years. To think, that years — _decades_ — of suffering could spawn from such a small vessel. Years of her youth, lost in boredom and misery and abuse to Drearbruh. A few more spent being battered on the battlefield, spoils shipped back to Drearburh to decay among the decaying. And how many, after that? How many more would Harrow take from her if she refused?

Into the quiet of Drearburh, Gideon asked, “Haven’t I given you enough?” 

“You have given me _nothing_ .” Harrow’s quiet echoed through the otherwise silent chamber, disdain pooling in the final word. Her eyes were hard and black, dark as the void she had dragged Gideon back through. “You have done _nothing_ for this house. Whatever paltry goods —”

“— hey, some of us almost died for those paltry goods —”

“— your command sends back, whatever scraps of land on some distant planet, it’s worthless. Assuming you have managed to keep your idiot mouth shut, per our agreement, it’s still only a matter of time until the rest of the Empire learns how far our noble house has fallen. I will not allow this house to become an annex of the Fifth or Third.” Hey, as far as annexations went, those were probably the best of the two. The Fifth had good food. The Third was _fun,_ something Harrowhark had probably never experienced in her life and therefore would not understand the merit of. “I need to go to the First House and become a Lyctor — _now,_ before —”

 _Before_ what, Gideon didn’t know. Harrow cut herself off, mouth flattening into a line. Her fists formed into hard balls. She startled at the sound of paper crinkling, the Emperor’s invitation crumpling in her tiny fist. Her eyes flicked down to it, as if she had forgotten it. 

Well. _That_ was cryptic as hell, but par for the course. Gideon could never tell what the hell she was talking about, just that it was rarely good and normally outright terrible. If she cared enough to guess, Gideon would wager that whatever bitten off secret Harrow refused to share fell under the latter. 

The First House. 

Gideon had been to a few of the others. The Fourth, the Second. Travelling between the houses of the empire was a gruelling endeavor, costly on both time and resources. She had met soldiers from all of the others. The ranks of the Cohort teemed with certain houses — the Second and the Fifth in upper command, and so many of the Fourth in the lower ones that Gideon wondered if their sole purpose was to pop out little toy soldiers to serve as cannon fodder. The Third were her favorite — strong livers, bold tongues. They were fun. The rest weren’t quite as common, but they still dappled the ranks with their house colors. Only Gideon wore the black of the horrible little house that Harrowhark was so desperate to save. 

No one came from the First. No one but the Emperor and his saints had even seen it. 

If Gideon had a say, she wouldn’t number among one of the unlucky ones to change that. She did not give a single shit what the First House was like, or what had died for her sins there. She wanted to return home — the home she had built for herself in her company, ever-changing and moving as it was. She wanted to leave this horrible place and never come back. 

“I won’t do it for you.” 

Harrow looked up from the note in her hand. Beneath the dark paint, her brows knit together. She opened her mouth to curse the day Gideon was born or whatever, but Gideon cut it off. 

“I will be your cavalier, but not for you. And once this is over, I’m never coming back.” She had said it once and been wrong. She wouldn’t let that happen again. “I mean it, Nonagesimus. I would rather die on the First than ever come back here.” 

Gideon was surprised when Harrowhark — slimy, ungrateful ass that she was — didn’t make some snide remark along the lines of, “ _If only I were so lucky.”_ Instead she straightened and fixed her black gaze on Gideon. Under the Cathedral’s meagre light of dying candles and bioluminescent powder, the white of her face paint looked carved from the night.

“Well then,” Harrowhark said. Not even a thank you! She swept down past the dais; for a moment Gideon was worried she was coming for her, but then she sidestepped past Gideon. Her robes whispered against the dusty ground. “There are preparations to be made. I’ll have your cell readied for you. And we’ll have to get you out of that garish color if you’re to be of any credit to this house.” 

Gideon had seen the scions of other houses pledge their loyalty as cavaliers to necromancers. It was a _thing._ There was a ceremony. Whether dressed up in the regalia reserved for formal events or in the drab armor used on the battlefield, there was an order to things. Most of it was words, a big speech that Gideon had zoned out over every time. It was excruciating to watch. She had never been to a wedding, but she imagined the experience to be the same flavor of misery — watching two people spiel out all kinds of pre-scripted intimacies that no human being had any business saying or hearing. She could only remember part of the vow— how did it go, again?

Gideon turned to watch Harrow’s retreating form. Despite her tendency to extol the nobility of her House, Harrow had essentially grown up on a backwater. As heir to the house, she _had_ to know the ceremony — but she continued, straight backed, toward the towering doors of Drearburh. 

How did it go, again? It was something morbid. Flesh and death, the kind of creepy stuff that necromancers couldn’t get enough of. 

“Hey,” Gideon said. 

At the entrance. Harrow paused. She turned to look back at Gideon, her face shrouded in shadow. 

“You were always going to do something like this, weren’t you?”

Harrow was silent. 

“Why?”

When Harrow responded, her voice was casual. “Because,” she said. She fiddled with something at her ear, and then dropped it — and from the bone earring sprouted a whole-ass skeleton, blossoming to twice her height. “I completely fucking hate you. No offense.” 

The skeleton threw the doors open, releasing Harrow into a night blacker and emptier than Castle Drearburh itself. She disappeared, off to make herself someone else’s problem. 

The end of the vows came to Gideon suddenly. 

_One flesh, one end._

It didn’t matter. 

She would never say those words to Harrow. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Feel free to scream with me in the server, or on Tumblr, where I'm [strangehunger](strangehunger.tumblr.com). Comments and kudos always appreciated. Thanks!


End file.
